Originally Posted by mother-

Wouldn't DISLIKE be more appropriate here?

Originally Posted by majorwibi

A couple of us who have access to the system have been watching all the flights people post enough data about to actually be able to research and we've found a couple of very interesting pieces of data:

1) There has never been a case of an buy-up occurring prior to medallions being cleared into F. There are cases where someone bought an F fare less than an hour before the flight but the buy-up shows up in the system differently and those are never processed if there are still medallions sitting in back. There are multiple cases where IROPS pushed someone into F; I can tell you there are times where I took a re-route (technically IROP) and all I asked for in return was a guaranteed F seat.

2) DL does not clear upgrades if there are more medallions in a given status level than there are seats in F available. If there are 7 PMs on the list but only 6 seats they wont clear anyone into F until F either gets one more seat or the number of medallions at a given level decreases.

Originally Posted by StayingHomeIsBetter

I thought the date of purchase for the ticket was a tie-breaker?

Originally Posted by mother-

That explains a LOT! (And really sucks to anyone not a DM trying to SDC onto a flight!) Why wouldn't they proceed as far down the list as inventory allowed at that time?

Originally Posted by Lackey99

That would make sense except it doesn't seem to be the case with the info on the flight where I started this thread. Flight info: Monday 2739 to 1823. 1st Seg UG cleared 6 days out. 2nd seg cleared 3 days out. During the 48hours after the PM window was open 1 seat was sold or possibly DM bought and got UG (they were advertising on the fare "$59 more to fly FC". There are still 4 seats available.

I didn't pay attention to the aircraft but it does seem they changed from a 737 to MD88 since all of a sudden 1A/B have disappeared from the seat map.

What's funny is they are doing the same thing on the flight home SAT-ATL...seats available but no UG. ATL-DCA...got the UG 6 days out.

As someone mentioned...why wouldn't they just clear PM's as listed in the clearance order? I am convinced this is just DL's way of trying to get every penny out of FC before living up to their end of the bargin and rewarding elites.

Originally Posted by StayingHomeIsBetter

Let me make sure I understand what you are suggesting here.

Are you saying that, when the PM window opens, if there are only 6 FC seats in V, and there are 7 PMs on the list, the computer will forget about all of the secondary priority factors and not upgrade any of the PMs?

If so, sounds like a backdoor way of not providing UGs and biding time for more FC purchased seats (i.e., monetization via another route).

Originally Posted by RobOnLI

Just my observation. Nothing I said or you suggested in your post is based on scientific fact. It's an interesting observation, though.

-RM

Originally Posted by GBadger

Are you certain that Kiosk buy-ups show up the same way in the system as gate upgrades (which I too have only seen occur after all medallions are upgraded)?